The Lord Confronts a Graceless People
I thought about starting this message off by talking about a 3 hour tour. But I didn't know if everyone would get the reference or not. So I decided it would be best simply to say...
We are embarking on a journey through the book of Jonah today. And part of the reason we are doing so is because it is such a fun book.
Now, I recognize that when most people read the book of Jonah, they are doing it just because it is a fun story. I mean, this is what Vacation Bible Schools are made of, right? It is an action packed story that doesn’t take long to read.
When you are stuck in the middle of the book of Leviticus or Jeremiah, what do you do? You turn to something like Jonah. You can only slog through those dietary laws for so long. You naturally turn to Jonah because it’s fun to read.
And it is true, Jonah has tons of action. It’s really exciting. The drama of storms, a man who gets eaten by a fish and then yarped back out onto dry ground. And then you have one of the greatest revivals of all time; a whole city is converted and puts on the very first Humility Parade. It’s just an gripping story.
Not only that, but there’s comedy. You can’t help but chuckle when you read some of this stuff. Most minor prophets are doom and gloom. But the book of Jonah is wild because there are parts of it that can really make you snort. As a matter of fact, we’ll talk about some of the funny stuff here this morning.
But the book of Jonah has got everuthing a gripping story should: You laugh, you cry; and you are typically glued to it to the end.
And I would be that a lot of people don’t really understand the nature and purpose of the book because of it. I know that has been the case for me. I’ll confess that Jonah has always been a book of the Bible that has been purely entertainment. I’ve not really thought much about its spiritual implications. And I bet that’s true for a lot of people. And it’s because the story is easy to get caught up in. You just start reading and it turns into a novel.
But I want you to understand that this book has a greater purpose. It’s not just here to entertain us. While it is a gripping story, you have to remember that this is a prophetical book. Jonah is a prophet. And even though this is a unique kind of prophecy, Jonah is still a prophet. And he’s bringing the Word of the Lord to the people of Israel.
You have to keep in mind that the prophets were God’s lawyers. They sought to bring charges against Israel. When Israel broke the covenant God had made with them, God would send in his prophets. And they were to bring God’s case against his people and let them know that they had done wrong and were liable to be punished if they did not repent.
So you have to keep that in mind. You have to keep in mind that this is not a story about a reluctant prophet. This is a story about Israel. Jonah is representative of the people of God. He’s something of a microcosm of the church. It’s almost like a role play. Jonah’s actions are indicative of our own actions and attitudes.
In other words, Jonah is a graceless prophet who is the personification of a graceless people. And so, while this book is designed to be very entertaining, you have to keep in mind that its purpose is really to remind us how miserly we can be when it comes to God’s grace.
To put it another way, it is written to remind us how incredibly liberal God is with his grace. And we should repent of our attempts to horde or limit the extent of that grace.
So, if I could summarize our passage this morning, I would do it this way: In our passage the Lord contends with his graceless people. Here in this passage (and really the entirety of the book) the Lord is confronting our failure to be the kind of witnesses that we are called to be.
And there are three things that we are going to see in our passage this morning. The first thing I want you to notice is how God calls us out on our gracelessness
I. He calls us out on it
Our passage is about a prophet who is on the run. We are told in verse 1 that the word of the Lord came to Jonah. God told him to go to Nineveh, which was the capital of Assyria. And he was to call out against it. In other words, he was to preach a hell, fire and brimstone message.
But what does Jonah do? His reaction is to run in the complete opposite direction. We are told that he immediately runs to Joppa and catches a boat to Tarshish, which scholars believe was a coastal town in Spain. In other words, it is on the complete opposite side of the world. God told Jonah to go East, but he scurries off to the West as fast as he can.
Why does he do that? It’s because he knows a thing or two about God. He knows that God is merciful and gracious. He is one who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin. And if he goes to Nineveh and preaches, he knows there’s a chance that they might end up repenting. And if they repent, do you know what God is going to do? God will show compassion on them. And that is the last thing that Jonah wants.
In a very real way Jonah tells God to “stick it.” In running he says, “I’m sorry Lord, but I don’t believe these people deserve your mercy. I am not going to fulfill my role as a witness to your mercy because I don’t like them.”
So, the book of Jonah, is written to call us out on this. This book is written to accuse us of failing to be the witnesses we are supposed to be.
We are to be beacons of God’s saving love. Unbelievers are supposed to hear that God will forgive them if they repent and turn to him. And the only way they can hear it is if it comes from us.
You see, God’s word tells us that we are to be a “kingdom of priests.” We are supposed to be a “city on a hill.” We are to be the ones who are to be the intermediaries between God and the world; the one who declare the reality of God’s steadfast love and mercy.
You see, the problem we have is that we don’t always do that. We don’t live up to that role. And we can be misers when it comes to God’s mercy. We can become very judgmental and we can think that we are gatekeepers of heaven.
In a sense, we like to play a little game called Predestination. We like to believe that Election is not a doctrine that belongs to God, but it is ours to choose who is elect and who isn’t.
Don’t believe me? Ask yourself, do you really want to share the gospel with everyone around you? Your neighbors? Your coworkers? The outspoken person who doesn’t share your political views? Do you desire to let the person who cheated you or abused you know that they can have eternal life?
What typically happens is that we have a certain group of people that we like. There are people who are like me (like us), who I think are the kind of people God would like. But there are other people who we don’t particularly care for. And, of course, God wouldn’t like them either. They are too evil. They haven’t treated me right. They just don’t live up to my standards. They are not the kind of sinners God would love (or should love).
So what what it comes down to this: We think that there are some people who are worthy of God’s grace. And since we have this bias against them, we end up suppressing the reality of God’s graciousness.
And Jonah writes to say, “I get that.” I was there. And you need to remember that this is wrong.
Jonah is not writing a biography here. He’s writing God’s indictment. His aim to confront about our lack of evangelistic concern. Jonah is calling us out for wanting to put a cap on God’s grace. Some people have a real beef with the doctrine of limited atonement. But Jonah is telling us that there is no one who limits the atonement more than we do.
And we are to recognize that a graceless spirit is a grave, wicked, evil violation of God’s covenant with us. And because it is so wicked, God not only calls us out on it, he takes the opportunity to poke fun at us for it.
II. He pokes fun at us for it
There’s a lot to laugh at in the book of Jonah. It really is a comedy in so many ways. For instance, we are told in verse 4 that the Lord hurled a storm at Jonah. That’s actually kind of funny. It’s almost like something you’d see in an old episode of Tom & Jerry. Jonah is running away from God. God winds up and throws a storm at him and hits him right in the back of the head.
It’s funny because, he’s a prophet of God. Doesn’t he know God is omnipresent? He’s familiar with Psalm 139, right? Where can you go to get away from the Lord? If you ascend to the heavens, he is there. If you make your bed in sheol (the grave), the Lord is there. If you escape to the utter most parts of the sea, his right hand will still hold me.
So the utter irrationality of Jonah is a bit of a chuckle.
Another thing that makes the story so funny is all the irony that you find in the book of Jonah. Irony is when something happens that is completely different than what we intended.
So one example of irony is that Jonah is the son of Amattai. The word Amattai means truth or faithfulness. He’s the son of truth or the son of faithfulness. But he’s acting against the truth. In running from God he’s not being very faithful.
So when the book tells us that the word of the Lord came to the son of faithfulness, we expect that Jonah will arise and go to Nineveh as a faithful one would. But you don’t get that.
Another example of irony is the compassion that the sailors have on Jonah. We read about the storm and how it is really bad. It has to be a wild one because these were experienced sailors. They’ve likely been through a storm or two. But this one has them at wits end. They know it has to be a storm from one of the gods. So they cast lots and it falls to Jonah. And Jonah says, “Yeah, it’s because of me. If you want to survive, you need to throw me overboard. Do that and it will all calm down.”
And you notice that they don’t do that. Verse 13 tells us that they dug in their oars and try to row as hard as they could. The idea is that they don’t want to see any harm come to Jonah. They know if they chuck him overboard, he’s as good as dead.
So here you have a guy who has no compassion for the pagan Ninevites. But he’s getting compassion from these pagan sailors.
You might even say he has no compassion for the pagan sailors, either. Jonah could have said, “Let me do you all a favor and jump. I know this storm is because of me. So I’ll just go and you all can get back to life.”
No, Jonah says, “If you want to live, you gotta pick me up and heave me over.” It’s almost as if Jonah is saying, “To hell with you all! I could care less about you. If I’m going down, you all are going down with me.”
He’s a stubborn little Jew. And so it’s the pagans who come out looking much more innocent. They are the ones with grace.
That’s supposed to be a little got ya moment. You’re supposed to laugh and say, “What’s going on here Jonah?”
Then, of course, Jonah gets swallowed by a great big fish. I mean, that’s hilarious.
But the funniest thing of all is what happens at the end of our text. The sailors end up converting. I mean, of all things, that’s the last thing Jonah wanted. As soon as Jonah hits the water, the sea immediately become calm. And in verse 16 we are told that they feared the Lord exceedingly, offered sacrifices to him and made vows.
This is classic slapstick kind of stuff here. Jonah says, “I hate those Ninevite pagans and I don’t want them turn to the Lord.” So he runs away. And what happens when he runs? He ends up being God’s instrument in converting a bunch of pagans. He ends up doing the very thing he hoped he wouldn’t do.
There’s this ironic twist where God says, “You want to limit the extent of my grace? Well, I tell you what, I’m going to grace even harder! As a matter of fact, I’m going to use your sinful acts to bring even more sinners unto myself!” You think that you can keep me from showing mercy by running away? I’m going to spite you with my mercy by showing mercy to your taxi cab drivers. More than that, I’m going to spreading my mercy off into Spain.”
That’s where I get a little interpretive at this point. Think of it this way. They probably couldn’t offer sacrifices on the boat. After all, what could they sacrifice? They had just hurled all the ship’s cargo over the edge of the boat. They probably would have to get back to land to offer their sacrifice. And in making vows, they were making promises to acknowledge this YHWH God. So they probably went back to their families and neighbors and told them about their experiences and their new God that they are worshiping.
I can’t help but think that God is mocking Jonah. It’s like he rubbing Jonah’s nose in his mercy and showing him that you cannot even begin to suppress how gracious the Lord really is.
What does this teach us? Well, it reminds us that there’s really no way we can stop God from being gracious and executing his desire to save. There’s no way we can limit it or horde it just for ourselves. God is going to show mercy to whomever he would like, whenever he would like, whether we like it or not.
If we do not fulfill the role we have, the best thing that can happen to us is that we end up becoming the butt of his jokes.
The bible says that the Lord sits in the heavens and laughs. He laughs at our futile little efforts. All that we do to try and oppose God is just silly. He steers our lives and our actions as he pleases. And there’s nothing we can do to run from him, let alone thwart his plans.
So as God brings his case against his people, he not only calls us out, he pokes fun. And as he pokes fun, he simply shows us all that much more clearly how gracious he really is.
There’s one more thing I want you to notice in our passage. As God confronts his graceless people, I also want you to see how he hounds us.
III. He hounds us in the midst of it
One of the beautiful things about this passage is that God doesn’t leave Jonah alone. He badgers Jonah with this storm. And we should be thankful that God nags us.
I mentioned that the Lord hurls a storm at them. But you notice that the storm gets worse and worse as you continue through the passage. It’s not just a bad storm, but it gets more and more nasty. The waves get higher and the wind becomes stronger. The rain beats harder. It becomes more and more tempestuous.
All in all, the longer Jonah says on the boat and resists God’s will, the more God fought against him.
It’s almost as if you hear God saying, “Jonah, I’m not kidding. You better repent. Don’t mess with me Jonah. Jonah, you cannot run from me.”
Now, again, you have to understand the greater intent of the book. This is not just about Jonah. Jonah represents Israel. He’s telling Israel about God’s mounting anger against them. At some point, Israel, because of their lack of repentance, is going to have a severe storm thrown at them. The whole nation is going to come under God’s wrath as Assyria comes and lays waste to them. They are eventually going to be carried off into exile for their sins.
And Jonah is reminding us that if we do not repent, there will be consequences. God will come against us and we will find ourselves facing a storm. God’s going to rock us and hit us harder and harder to try and make us come to our senses.
But what I want you to see is that the Lord could have just sunk the ship. The Lord could have dropped a giant hail stone out of the sky right through the hull of the ship and sunk it in the harbor, before it even set sail. But that’s not what he does. The Lord hounds Jonah. He pesters him and berates him and brings all kinds of troubles upon him.
The point I’m trying to make is this: this storm is a kind of grace in and of itself. It’s a call to repent. It’s a call to turn and a call to life and obedience.
This is how gracious God is. He’s not merely attempting to show grace to the heathen, he’s showing grace to his people. He’s saying, “I’m so gracious, I will even forgive you. I’m so gracious, I’m not treating you as you sins deserve. I’m willing to show you mercy and pardon your sins as well.”
You know, we should be really scared when God is silent. When we are in sin and we do not have any difficulty, that’s actually a very bad thing. In the book of Romans, we read something like that. One of the worst forms of judgment is when God gives us over to our sins. God says, “Fine, have it your way.” And he lets us go about our sinning. In other words, God goes silent.
That, my friends, is a very bad thing. It is a sign that God is withholding his grace. In his anger he just lets us go.
We should thank God that he pesters us and hounds us. It’s an indication that he still loves us and is willing to work with us.
I’m not saying we can read God’s chastisement into everything that happens to us. Sometimes the Lord just has us go through trials and tribulations because he wants us to grow and really learn to trust him. But I don’t want you to think that trials and tribulations are only that either. Sometimes he comes rap, tap, tapping on our lives in order to get us to wise up. Sometimes he must try us because we are not walking with him in the way we should.
Think of 1 Corinthians and the way they were handling the Lord’s Table. Paul says, “this is why some of you are sick and some have died.” This is God’s way of telling you that you are out of line. You need to correct things and get right with the Lord!
All in all, these tribulations are a grace in themselves. And, as I said before, we should be thankful that the Lord is not silent. As long as he nags, there’s hope.
And it may simply be that he’s hounding you right now. Right here in the preaching of His word. It might be that you feel like the Lord is pestering you about your sins. Perhaps it is your graceless spirit.
Be thankful for that. And know that the Lord is holding out his infinite riches of his grace to you too. And if you turn to him and seek reconciliation, he is happy to accept and restore you.
We are embarking on a journey through the book of Jonah today. And part of the reason we are doing so is because it is such a fun book.
Now, I recognize that when most people read the book of Jonah, they are doing it just because it is a fun story. I mean, this is what Vacation Bible Schools are made of, right? It is an action packed story that doesn’t take long to read.
When you are stuck in the middle of the book of Leviticus or Jeremiah, what do you do? You turn to something like Jonah. You can only slog through those dietary laws for so long. You naturally turn to Jonah because it’s fun to read.
And it is true, Jonah has tons of action. It’s really exciting. The drama of storms, a man who gets eaten by a fish and then yarped back out onto dry ground. And then you have one of the greatest revivals of all time; a whole city is converted and puts on the very first Humility Parade. It’s just an gripping story.
Not only that, but there’s comedy. You can’t help but chuckle when you read some of this stuff. Most minor prophets are doom and gloom. But the book of Jonah is wild because there are parts of it that can really make you snort. As a matter of fact, we’ll talk about some of the funny stuff here this morning.
But the book of Jonah has got everuthing a gripping story should: You laugh, you cry; and you are typically glued to it to the end.
And I would be that a lot of people don’t really understand the nature and purpose of the book because of it. I know that has been the case for me. I’ll confess that Jonah has always been a book of the Bible that has been purely entertainment. I’ve not really thought much about its spiritual implications. And I bet that’s true for a lot of people. And it’s because the story is easy to get caught up in. You just start reading and it turns into a novel.
But I want you to understand that this book has a greater purpose. It’s not just here to entertain us. While it is a gripping story, you have to remember that this is a prophetical book. Jonah is a prophet. And even though this is a unique kind of prophecy, Jonah is still a prophet. And he’s bringing the Word of the Lord to the people of Israel.
You have to keep in mind that the prophets were God’s lawyers. They sought to bring charges against Israel. When Israel broke the covenant God had made with them, God would send in his prophets. And they were to bring God’s case against his people and let them know that they had done wrong and were liable to be punished if they did not repent.
So you have to keep that in mind. You have to keep in mind that this is not a story about a reluctant prophet. This is a story about Israel. Jonah is representative of the people of God. He’s something of a microcosm of the church. It’s almost like a role play. Jonah’s actions are indicative of our own actions and attitudes.
In other words, Jonah is a graceless prophet who is the personification of a graceless people. And so, while this book is designed to be very entertaining, you have to keep in mind that its purpose is really to remind us how miserly we can be when it comes to God’s grace.
To put it another way, it is written to remind us how incredibly liberal God is with his grace. And we should repent of our attempts to horde or limit the extent of that grace.
So, if I could summarize our passage this morning, I would do it this way: In our passage the Lord contends with his graceless people. Here in this passage (and really the entirety of the book) the Lord is confronting our failure to be the kind of witnesses that we are called to be.
And there are three things that we are going to see in our passage this morning. The first thing I want you to notice is how God calls us out on our gracelessness
I. He calls us out on it
Our passage is about a prophet who is on the run. We are told in verse 1 that the word of the Lord came to Jonah. God told him to go to Nineveh, which was the capital of Assyria. And he was to call out against it. In other words, he was to preach a hell, fire and brimstone message.
But what does Jonah do? His reaction is to run in the complete opposite direction. We are told that he immediately runs to Joppa and catches a boat to Tarshish, which scholars believe was a coastal town in Spain. In other words, it is on the complete opposite side of the world. God told Jonah to go East, but he scurries off to the West as fast as he can.
Why does he do that? It’s because he knows a thing or two about God. He knows that God is merciful and gracious. He is one who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin. And if he goes to Nineveh and preaches, he knows there’s a chance that they might end up repenting. And if they repent, do you know what God is going to do? God will show compassion on them. And that is the last thing that Jonah wants.
In a very real way Jonah tells God to “stick it.” In running he says, “I’m sorry Lord, but I don’t believe these people deserve your mercy. I am not going to fulfill my role as a witness to your mercy because I don’t like them.”
So, the book of Jonah, is written to call us out on this. This book is written to accuse us of failing to be the witnesses we are supposed to be.
We are to be beacons of God’s saving love. Unbelievers are supposed to hear that God will forgive them if they repent and turn to him. And the only way they can hear it is if it comes from us.
You see, God’s word tells us that we are to be a “kingdom of priests.” We are supposed to be a “city on a hill.” We are to be the ones who are to be the intermediaries between God and the world; the one who declare the reality of God’s steadfast love and mercy.
You see, the problem we have is that we don’t always do that. We don’t live up to that role. And we can be misers when it comes to God’s mercy. We can become very judgmental and we can think that we are gatekeepers of heaven.
In a sense, we like to play a little game called Predestination. We like to believe that Election is not a doctrine that belongs to God, but it is ours to choose who is elect and who isn’t.
Don’t believe me? Ask yourself, do you really want to share the gospel with everyone around you? Your neighbors? Your coworkers? The outspoken person who doesn’t share your political views? Do you desire to let the person who cheated you or abused you know that they can have eternal life?
What typically happens is that we have a certain group of people that we like. There are people who are like me (like us), who I think are the kind of people God would like. But there are other people who we don’t particularly care for. And, of course, God wouldn’t like them either. They are too evil. They haven’t treated me right. They just don’t live up to my standards. They are not the kind of sinners God would love (or should love).
So what what it comes down to this: We think that there are some people who are worthy of God’s grace. And since we have this bias against them, we end up suppressing the reality of God’s graciousness.
And Jonah writes to say, “I get that.” I was there. And you need to remember that this is wrong.
Jonah is not writing a biography here. He’s writing God’s indictment. His aim to confront about our lack of evangelistic concern. Jonah is calling us out for wanting to put a cap on God’s grace. Some people have a real beef with the doctrine of limited atonement. But Jonah is telling us that there is no one who limits the atonement more than we do.
And we are to recognize that a graceless spirit is a grave, wicked, evil violation of God’s covenant with us. And because it is so wicked, God not only calls us out on it, he takes the opportunity to poke fun at us for it.
II. He pokes fun at us for it
There’s a lot to laugh at in the book of Jonah. It really is a comedy in so many ways. For instance, we are told in verse 4 that the Lord hurled a storm at Jonah. That’s actually kind of funny. It’s almost like something you’d see in an old episode of Tom & Jerry. Jonah is running away from God. God winds up and throws a storm at him and hits him right in the back of the head.
It’s funny because, he’s a prophet of God. Doesn’t he know God is omnipresent? He’s familiar with Psalm 139, right? Where can you go to get away from the Lord? If you ascend to the heavens, he is there. If you make your bed in sheol (the grave), the Lord is there. If you escape to the utter most parts of the sea, his right hand will still hold me.
So the utter irrationality of Jonah is a bit of a chuckle.
Another thing that makes the story so funny is all the irony that you find in the book of Jonah. Irony is when something happens that is completely different than what we intended.
So one example of irony is that Jonah is the son of Amattai. The word Amattai means truth or faithfulness. He’s the son of truth or the son of faithfulness. But he’s acting against the truth. In running from God he’s not being very faithful.
So when the book tells us that the word of the Lord came to the son of faithfulness, we expect that Jonah will arise and go to Nineveh as a faithful one would. But you don’t get that.
Another example of irony is the compassion that the sailors have on Jonah. We read about the storm and how it is really bad. It has to be a wild one because these were experienced sailors. They’ve likely been through a storm or two. But this one has them at wits end. They know it has to be a storm from one of the gods. So they cast lots and it falls to Jonah. And Jonah says, “Yeah, it’s because of me. If you want to survive, you need to throw me overboard. Do that and it will all calm down.”
And you notice that they don’t do that. Verse 13 tells us that they dug in their oars and try to row as hard as they could. The idea is that they don’t want to see any harm come to Jonah. They know if they chuck him overboard, he’s as good as dead.
So here you have a guy who has no compassion for the pagan Ninevites. But he’s getting compassion from these pagan sailors.
You might even say he has no compassion for the pagan sailors, either. Jonah could have said, “Let me do you all a favor and jump. I know this storm is because of me. So I’ll just go and you all can get back to life.”
No, Jonah says, “If you want to live, you gotta pick me up and heave me over.” It’s almost as if Jonah is saying, “To hell with you all! I could care less about you. If I’m going down, you all are going down with me.”
He’s a stubborn little Jew. And so it’s the pagans who come out looking much more innocent. They are the ones with grace.
That’s supposed to be a little got ya moment. You’re supposed to laugh and say, “What’s going on here Jonah?”
Then, of course, Jonah gets swallowed by a great big fish. I mean, that’s hilarious.
But the funniest thing of all is what happens at the end of our text. The sailors end up converting. I mean, of all things, that’s the last thing Jonah wanted. As soon as Jonah hits the water, the sea immediately become calm. And in verse 16 we are told that they feared the Lord exceedingly, offered sacrifices to him and made vows.
This is classic slapstick kind of stuff here. Jonah says, “I hate those Ninevite pagans and I don’t want them turn to the Lord.” So he runs away. And what happens when he runs? He ends up being God’s instrument in converting a bunch of pagans. He ends up doing the very thing he hoped he wouldn’t do.
There’s this ironic twist where God says, “You want to limit the extent of my grace? Well, I tell you what, I’m going to grace even harder! As a matter of fact, I’m going to use your sinful acts to bring even more sinners unto myself!” You think that you can keep me from showing mercy by running away? I’m going to spite you with my mercy by showing mercy to your taxi cab drivers. More than that, I’m going to spreading my mercy off into Spain.”
That’s where I get a little interpretive at this point. Think of it this way. They probably couldn’t offer sacrifices on the boat. After all, what could they sacrifice? They had just hurled all the ship’s cargo over the edge of the boat. They probably would have to get back to land to offer their sacrifice. And in making vows, they were making promises to acknowledge this YHWH God. So they probably went back to their families and neighbors and told them about their experiences and their new God that they are worshiping.
I can’t help but think that God is mocking Jonah. It’s like he rubbing Jonah’s nose in his mercy and showing him that you cannot even begin to suppress how gracious the Lord really is.
What does this teach us? Well, it reminds us that there’s really no way we can stop God from being gracious and executing his desire to save. There’s no way we can limit it or horde it just for ourselves. God is going to show mercy to whomever he would like, whenever he would like, whether we like it or not.
If we do not fulfill the role we have, the best thing that can happen to us is that we end up becoming the butt of his jokes.
The bible says that the Lord sits in the heavens and laughs. He laughs at our futile little efforts. All that we do to try and oppose God is just silly. He steers our lives and our actions as he pleases. And there’s nothing we can do to run from him, let alone thwart his plans.
So as God brings his case against his people, he not only calls us out, he pokes fun. And as he pokes fun, he simply shows us all that much more clearly how gracious he really is.
There’s one more thing I want you to notice in our passage. As God confronts his graceless people, I also want you to see how he hounds us.
III. He hounds us in the midst of it
One of the beautiful things about this passage is that God doesn’t leave Jonah alone. He badgers Jonah with this storm. And we should be thankful that God nags us.
I mentioned that the Lord hurls a storm at them. But you notice that the storm gets worse and worse as you continue through the passage. It’s not just a bad storm, but it gets more and more nasty. The waves get higher and the wind becomes stronger. The rain beats harder. It becomes more and more tempestuous.
All in all, the longer Jonah says on the boat and resists God’s will, the more God fought against him.
It’s almost as if you hear God saying, “Jonah, I’m not kidding. You better repent. Don’t mess with me Jonah. Jonah, you cannot run from me.”
Now, again, you have to understand the greater intent of the book. This is not just about Jonah. Jonah represents Israel. He’s telling Israel about God’s mounting anger against them. At some point, Israel, because of their lack of repentance, is going to have a severe storm thrown at them. The whole nation is going to come under God’s wrath as Assyria comes and lays waste to them. They are eventually going to be carried off into exile for their sins.
And Jonah is reminding us that if we do not repent, there will be consequences. God will come against us and we will find ourselves facing a storm. God’s going to rock us and hit us harder and harder to try and make us come to our senses.
But what I want you to see is that the Lord could have just sunk the ship. The Lord could have dropped a giant hail stone out of the sky right through the hull of the ship and sunk it in the harbor, before it even set sail. But that’s not what he does. The Lord hounds Jonah. He pesters him and berates him and brings all kinds of troubles upon him.
The point I’m trying to make is this: this storm is a kind of grace in and of itself. It’s a call to repent. It’s a call to turn and a call to life and obedience.
This is how gracious God is. He’s not merely attempting to show grace to the heathen, he’s showing grace to his people. He’s saying, “I’m so gracious, I will even forgive you. I’m so gracious, I’m not treating you as you sins deserve. I’m willing to show you mercy and pardon your sins as well.”
You know, we should be really scared when God is silent. When we are in sin and we do not have any difficulty, that’s actually a very bad thing. In the book of Romans, we read something like that. One of the worst forms of judgment is when God gives us over to our sins. God says, “Fine, have it your way.” And he lets us go about our sinning. In other words, God goes silent.
That, my friends, is a very bad thing. It is a sign that God is withholding his grace. In his anger he just lets us go.
We should thank God that he pesters us and hounds us. It’s an indication that he still loves us and is willing to work with us.
I’m not saying we can read God’s chastisement into everything that happens to us. Sometimes the Lord just has us go through trials and tribulations because he wants us to grow and really learn to trust him. But I don’t want you to think that trials and tribulations are only that either. Sometimes he comes rap, tap, tapping on our lives in order to get us to wise up. Sometimes he must try us because we are not walking with him in the way we should.
Think of 1 Corinthians and the way they were handling the Lord’s Table. Paul says, “this is why some of you are sick and some have died.” This is God’s way of telling you that you are out of line. You need to correct things and get right with the Lord!
All in all, these tribulations are a grace in themselves. And, as I said before, we should be thankful that the Lord is not silent. As long as he nags, there’s hope.
And it may simply be that he’s hounding you right now. Right here in the preaching of His word. It might be that you feel like the Lord is pestering you about your sins. Perhaps it is your graceless spirit.
Be thankful for that. And know that the Lord is holding out his infinite riches of his grace to you too. And if you turn to him and seek reconciliation, he is happy to accept and restore you.